Taciturn brother’s death reveals a surprise legacy

Paul Gauvin

Thursday

Sep 25, 2008 at 2:00 AMSep 25, 2008 at 9:05 PM

My only brother, Ray, died last week. He was 81. He slipped away partly because he couldn’t break the cigarette habit that brought on respiratory distress. He rejected a voluntary trip to the hospital, opting for an afternoon rest in his own bed as family, worried and insistent, called 911 while his preferred sweet nap, alas, morphed to infinite sleep.

My only brother, Ray, died last week. He was 81. He slipped away partly because he couldn’t break the cigarette habit that brought on respiratory distress. He rejected a voluntary trip to the hospital, opting for an afternoon rest in his own bed as family, worried and insistent, called 911 while his preferred sweet nap, alas, morphed to infinite sleep. The priest at the, funeral Mass, who had known my brother for 40 years, likened him to Sinatra’s signature song, “I Did It My Way,” - even if it was the hard way. Ray was not a practitioner of self-revelation. None of his five golden sons, one a Fall River police sergeant who interned in former Chief Neil Nightingale’s brood of Hyannis summer cops; one a school teacher and former Golden Gloves champ who was a fight away from making the U.S. Olympic team; two in business, one of whom once managed the Melody Tent in Hyannis, and another in the law profession who went to college on a baseball scholarship, were privy to the details of their father’s early years. The boys knew he was in World War II. But that was about it. For the record, he was with the Sea Bees (Navy Construction Battalion) on rat-infested Okinawa while it was still under siege by Japanese snipers and the dread Kamikaze suicide aircraft that left him with a lifetime of wrestling with near phobic fear of rodents and planes. His unit was constructing a runway from which to launch air support for the invasion of the Japanese mainland, pre-empted by the B-29 that dropped “the” bomb on Nagasaki killing 70,000 instantly, effectively ending hostilities and pre-empting the invasion. Maj. Gen. Charles Sweeney, who was the Nagasaki pilot and a former commander the 102nd Fighter Wing at Otis, visited the Cape in 1998 to fly a vintage B-29 visiting here also. He signed a copy of his book, War’s End, for my brother who, said Sweeney, with his CB unit helped save his plane by completing enough runway for an emergency landing on two engines and only seven gallons of gasoline left. My brother’s boys had only vague notions that their father had been a young athlete of considerable skills. He had not regaled them with tales of his versatility on the diamond for the Catholic Youth Organization where he could pitch one day, catch the next, play the infield and drive in his share of runs. I know because I accompanied our father to most games that, in those pre-TV days, attracted hundreds of fans on balmy summer evenings to watch and to socialize. It was murmured now and then that he could develop into major league material. Nor were his boys aware that he was a whiz on the basketball courts and once held a high school record for game points scored – 44 – or of his antics on the gridiron for Diman Vocational High School in Fall River. His post-war athleticism diminished and like many of his comrades, he found himself victimized by the trauma of war and the civilian frustrations roiling in its wake. He was one of the Greatest Generation’s anonymous warriors who returned home to unemployment, loitering with like fellows around corner bars, pitched pennies on the sidewalk, played peg ball in the park on Sunday’s for nickels, went to Saturday dances, teased the bashful young ladies waiting for the bus, sometimes got into fistfights over nothing, stopped going to church and stayed out late. A laborer’s job with the state and marriage to Eveline, who would help navigate a temporarily rudderless life through seas violent and calm for more than 50 years, brought him family, responsibility and goals. He labored days, then again at night as a bartender in neighborhood cafes where the fog of cigarette smoke surely clogged many a lung. “He had a plan” his eldest son, Gary, said after the funeral. “He said that if he could put the first two siblings on the right path, the others would naturally follow.” And so they did. Raised in one of the city’s toughest housing projects, all playing Little League ball or other sports coached by their father, and constantly reminded to exercise the mind as well, they all found a way to get through college on their own. With the boys grown and rearing families, my brother spent his retirement years being an active grandpa, caring for, playing with and bringing grandchildren to and from school. But his final legacy, a small thing we might say, emerged at the wake to the family’s wonder: A young woman, looking much a waif in her mid-20s, was among the hundreds of politicians, Navy friends, and teammates and family friends that had formed lines outside the funeral home to pay their respects. She came in sobbing, wiping tears from her eyes while explaining who she was. “You must be his brother,” she said, eyes wet with grief. “I work in the bakery and he used to stop by and we would take a cigarette break together. He would ask me if I wanted to work the back room of a bakery all my life and kept urging me to go back to school. And I did,” she said, lifting the tissue to her eyes again. “And I’m still in school.” She sobbed. “Oh, I’m going to miss him and our talks so much.” Amen to that.

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